Constitution Class 24th Century Question

[Timo]

It's not even a "Ah, this old and common type - this narrows it down to just 3,421 operating organizations!" situation. It's more like "Ah, this old and common type - it doesn't narrow it down at all, because we have yet to meet a species that wouldn't have operated it, and none of them remembers who originated it".

That is, even humans have those in ENT ("Demons"), while a ship of that design doesn't warrant speculation as to its origin even when the heroes yearn to learn of origin ("Final Mission").

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Why would you say so? Today, organizations produce automobiles for multiple races all over the entire planet at multiple points in history, engaging in both persistence and retro to create products that sell despite being decades out of date.

Because I'm not making a flawed comparison between real life production of automobiles which has only been going on for 150 years and just on one planet, to a fictional show with the flawed idea that some alien organization has been producing the same exact design of ships for thousands of years and selling them to alien races in a 53,000 LY radius of the galaxy.

 

[Timo]

Again, why not? The only difference there is in scale. And space adventures necessarily involve greater scale than planetbound ones.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Again, why not? The only difference there is in scale. And space adventures necessarily involve greater scale than planetbound ones.

I've already explained myself. Take my explanation or leave it.

 

[Timo]

I never got a why, is all. But apparently it's not an element in an "explanation"?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shawnster]

The Vico is an example of a Starfleet design not operated by Starfleet.

Oberth Class, SS, not USS. NAR, not NCC

 

[Dukhat]

The Vico is an example of a Starfleet design not operated by Starfleet.

Oberth Class, SS, not USS. NAR, not NCC

I can see the Vico as an example of Starfleet giving one of their older vessels to a civilian agency for science studies. The same thing probably happened with the Raven (formerly the Jefferies, probably with Starfleet at the time.)

 

[Timo]

Hard to tell with the Raven, since we don't get material that would establish her as an older type.

But there might be back-and-forth: many navies make use of ships built to mercantile standards, sometimes taken directly off the shelf or indeed off the trade. Or then there might be mere bookkeeping sleight-of-hand, so that a civilian vessel becomes (additionally?) Starfleet for the purposes of a specific mission.

The thing about "Jeffries" is that the ship doesn't cease to be "USS" in the logs even after the name change. We might well think in terms of "original name" or "former name" instead of "fake name", though - if the Hansens wanted to obscure their trail from Starfleet, they'd not be motivated to call their ship a Starfleet vessel in subsequent logs, if indeed that's what "USS" stands for. Their not filing a proper flight plan would appear to have been a half-measure at best.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Yes, it’s possible the Raven was a civilian ship from the start and Starfleet had nothing to do with its construction. I was speculating about the name change from Jeffries, but for all I know that was just a retcon.

 

[Seal87]

Just wondering since we saw the wide use of the Miranda Class and it's variants on DS9. Is it a possible that the Constitution Class Refit style could still be in service. Not so much the ones that were refit but the ones built from the Keel up. Like the Enterprise A was.

When I played with models of them, they all flew side by side, but I think, that in the TNG era they wanted to keep from showing the Constitution Refit, cause it's just too beautiful. Every time we got a glimpse of it we'd be hoping to see the TOS crew again, and they probably wanted to avoid the backlash of the let down by not having them appear.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Hard to tell with the Raven, since we don't get material that would establish her as an older type.

Maybe Ambassador-era at the oldest.

The nacelles have a similar blue "wrap-around" styling to the warp nacelles that first popped up during that era.

 

[ChallengerHK]

And then it was back to Constitution class in the paper graphic seen in ST6.
Timo Saloniemi

They might be two different design efforts which share a common hull type.